Posts Tagged ‘imaginary futures’

In his recent book, Imaginary Futures, Richard Barbrook describes how “imaginary futures” were promoted by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War (1947-1991) to describe their vision for the future in attempts to gain influence and allies around the world. An “imaginary future” was (and still is) a description of how things “will be” under a given power’s social system. Barbrook documents this Cold War competition for the imaginary future. Reading his book left this reader asking, “What is the imaginary future of the United States of today?” (more…)

Today, while reading Richard Barbrook’s fantastic book, Imaginary Futures, I encountered this well-stated quote from a much older book, Modern Corporation and Private Property, by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means written in 1932:

The communist thinks of the community in terms of a state; the corporation director thinks of it in terms of an enterprise; and though this difference between the two might lead to a radical divergence in results, it still remains true that the corporation director who would subordinate the interests of the individual stockholder to those of the group more nearly resembles the communist in thought than he does the protagonist of private property.

So, around the world, are they really closet Stalinists or are they the freedom-loving CEOs they say they are? Modern Corporation is definitely going on my reading list.